Sam Barnett and Seb Blanc working on something new. Quick notes for what we are up to:

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We move fast: 6 years from idea to action

Seb and I share many odd similarities: We have the same initials. We are the same height. We each have three daughters. We worked together at Struq -  which we built across Europe and America and eventually sold to Quantcast. When Struq was sold we agreed to start a business together. 6 years later, here we are!

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We are builders

Clarification: we suck at DIY - we mean building technology businesses.  

 

Sam was the founder and CEO of Struq which was acquired by Quantcast. At Quantcast, he became Chief Product Officer (- 22 offices, ~1000 people). Sam then joined Entrepreneur First ($200M VC fund backed by Reid Hoffman) as President and Partner which has created and funded 200+ deep tech companies. 

 

After Struq, Seb became the CEO of Skimlinks and sold it in 2020 for $60m -  turning a company that was struggling and burning millions annually into one that grew aggressively and produced 8 digits of ebitda in the year it was acquired. 

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We love a good random experiment 

In the past 6 years, we: 

• Broke the Guinness World Record for largest online art class to raise money for those most impacted by COVID

• Helped organisations providing census data and technology to developing countries so they can make better policy decisions

• Created Street Art Murals in SF to raise awareness of those doing exceptional good in the world.

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We are back to building businesses and are searching for pain

We are looking for big problems using the recipe that brought us this far in the first place:

• Break problems into Utility Functions that clearly state the components of that problem.

• A Utility Function enables us to identify where the leverage is in that problem area.

• We then do ‘customer discovery’ straight with customers rather than just do table top analysis

• We run quick real world experiments and use traction (or lack thereof) to see if we can solve these problems

• We are disciplined about canning 90% of what we do to never fall prey to the availability bias or the sunk cost fallacy

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We are not sure where we’ll end up, but we know where we’ll start from

We are focusing on problem spaces that fit within the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

• Food Systems and Nutrition (SDG 3)

• Carbon capture and sequestration (SDG 13)

• Productive employment for those who have been left behind (SDG 8)

 

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Hint: if you’ve worked/studied in these areas, hit the contact button so we can talk ;)